CULTURE

Footer Column 2

Footer Legal

Footer Main

Nav Bar

OTHER

SPORTS

Subscribe, at any level, to play

Thanks for your interest in Defector Crosswords!

Become a subscriber today to get unlimited access

Thanks for reading!

Plans start at $8/month.

Subscribers enjoy unlimited, ad-free browsing.

Register to continue

Or click here to subscribe for unlimited, ad-free access!

Our gift to you: This year's post is unlocked. Register your email to get even more free articles.

Welcome to the 2025 Hater's Guide!

Just register your email:

This blog is free to read.

This is Defector, a new sports blog and media company. We made this place together, we own it together, we run it together. Without access, without favor, without discretion, and without interference.

Defector


<p>charismatic megafauna (they/them)</p>


Sabrina Imbler

a mother cape fur seal screaming in front of some pups

Creaturefector

How To Eavesdrop On A Seal In A Crowd Of 90,000

Close up view of the face of a blue shark showing details of the eye, mouth and sensors in it's snout. This image was taken on a baited shark dive 50 kms offshore past Western Cape.

Frankly It Would Be Surprising If No Sharks Were On Cocaine

150-million-year-old fossil of Stegosaurus specimen is on display at Sotheby's in New York on July 10, 2024.

No One Person Should Be Able To Own A Dinosaur

a close-up of a male common noctule bat against a dark background. the wings week logo is in the leftmost corner

Wings Week

Bat Boy Summer Goals: Hang With The Bros, Chow Down, And Make A Lot Of Sperm

How I Learned To Moth And Embrace The Dark

a Japanese honeybee slapping an ant off a ledge with its fluttering wing

Watch As Honeybee SLAPS Ant In Heated Exchange

A crowd of ants, in which an ant in the middle is receiving an amputation from another ant

Make A ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Spin-Off But This Time It’s Ants

A round stingray (Urolophus halleri) I photographed in shallow water at Bolsa Chica wetlands (Southern California). The clouds of sand around the eyes and and body were formed as the stingray flapped and positioned deeper in the sand, expelling water. You can see the spiracles behind the eyes.

Charlotte, The Stingray At The Heart Of Scandal, Has Died

A photo of a brown rat fluorescing white and blue under UV light

Does A Rat Need A Reason To Glow Ethereally?

Close up of Tiger leech hanging off the edge of a leaf in Danum Valley rain forest

A Slimy New Contender For The Olympic Diving Team?

a yellow and blue striped joro spider in a web

The “It Girl” Spiders That May Or May Not Be Taking Over The East Coast, At Some Point, Eventually

Defector Up All Night

It’s A Lovely Day In The Pleistocene And You Are A Horrible Giga-Goose

a large red deep-sea squid holds a mass of brownish eggs in her tentacles while her big eye stares out at the camera

Did Your Mother Cradle You Lovingly In Her Suckers?

Kelsey McKinney

Alex Sujong Laughlin

A young woman in a swimsuit and sun hat poses with a drink at the edge of a pool

Announcements

The Normal Gossip Summer Guide To Eavesdropping

a gif of a dragonfly and other flies flying into a mountain pass in the Pyrenees

The Big Bug Migration Of The Pyrenees Mountains

Why The Matador Bug Is A Walking Red Flag

A single ant eating a drop of honey on a white background

If You Give An Ant A Panera Charged Lemonade It Will Become More Powerful Than You Could Possibly Imagine

a mimic blenny hiding in a burrow in a rock in a coral reef in Indonesia

The World’s Sneakiest Fish Just Got Sneakier

Anne Hatahway cries in her Subaru in a scene from The Idea of You

Arts And Culture

The Ideas Of ‘The Idea Of You,’ According To Us

Pro-Palestinian protesters opposing Israel's participation in the 68th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) demonstrate in Malmo, Sweden, on May 11, 2024, with a poster saying : NEJ TILL FOLKMORD, Welcome to the Genocide Song Contest

The Myth Of An Apolitical Eurovision

Brood XIX cicadas hold onto blades of grass on the campus of the University of North Carolina

Everything You Need To Know About The Cicadas, As Well As Some Additional Cicada Information That Is Less Crucial But Still Provocative

An ancient grave with a skeleton with both masculine and feminine signifiers.

Science

Can We Exhume Gender From The Long-Dead?

a dice snake feigning death on top of a camouflage piece of clothing

Want To Eat This Snake? What If It Was Dead, Bleeding From The Mouth, And Covered In Poop? What Then?

A male albert's lyrebird, which is a brown bird, with its extravagant tail feathers flipped over his head

Are You Wooed By This Bird’s Gronking Song?

Beekeeper Matt Hilton removes a colony of bees that formed on the net behind home plate during a delay to the MLB game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on April 30, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona